I want to take a moment today to remember our colleague Wabel Abdallah, who was our resident representative in Afghanistan and who, as many of you know, was killed in the terrorist attack in Kabul on Friday. We are mourning a colleague, a friend to many of us, above all a dedicated civil servant who represented the best the Fund has to offer, and gave his life in the line of duty, helping the Afghan people. Our hearts go out to his family and to the many victims of this brutal attack.

Let me now turn to our update of the World Economic Outlook and distill its three main messages:

First, the recovery is strengthening. We forecast world growth to increase from 3% in 2013 to 3.7% in 2014. We forecast growth in advanced economies to increase from 1.3% in 2013 to 2.2% in 2014. And we forecast growth in emerging market and developing economies to increase from 4.7% in 2013 to 5.1% in 2014.

What has been the role of foreign banks in financing growth and convergence in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe, and how is that role changing? This is discussed in the first issue of a new series of analytical work on the region called Regional Economic Issues, which we launched at a joint IMF/Czech National Bank conference two weeks ago in Prague.